Life's Too Short
by Per.fidem.intrepidus
Summary: One-shot. Based on the outtake song, Life's Too Short Reprise, Elsa is locked up and Anna is beginning to freeze to death, both girls being to ponder what life would have been like if they had just taken a moment to think about the other's point of view.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Frozen.**

Elsa's eyes fluttered open and she lay in a haze until they came into focus. Sitting up, she looked around, taking in her surroundings. There was quite a lot of stone. Slowly, she sat up, and as she did her focus changed quickly to the tall and slender window on the other side of the room. Realization set in as she flew to it in a panic, only to be stopped by the chains that cuffed her hands.

Getting as close as she could to the window, she peered out into the stormy white world. "No. What have I done?" Anna was right. Elsa had plunged everything into a deep winter, and it was worse than she thought.

Just then, in walked the last person she wanted to see.

"Why did you bring me here?"

As Hans approached Elsa, he replied, "I just couldn't let them kill you."

_Don't you get it?! Can anyone please just try to understand?!_ She yelled inside her head. "I am a danger to Arendelle. Get Anna!" She was going to have to talk reason into her sister.

"Anna has not returned."

Elsa immediately swung her head in the direction of the single window, searching far beyond its snowy exterior, thinking only of her sister. She hasn't come back? Where could she be? Could Elsa really have struck her?

"If you could just stop the winter, bring back summer. Please."

"Don't you see? I can't!" Looking at Han's disappointed face, fear began rising once again inside her. "You have to tell them to let me go!"

"I will do what I can," was his only response before he left.

Elsa looked down at the cuffs that held her. Sadness swirled within her like the snow. "I've frozen out the only friend I'll ever know," she said as a sigh seeped from her mouth. She slumped down on the bench, replaying that single moment in her mind, the moment Anna had come to take her back to Arendelle, and Elsa's response of an icy blast. Why did she go and do that? Why did Anna always have to bug her? She rested her head against the wall. They were both such fools.

"There's no way I can win," she whispered to herself silently, "But, I wish that I had been there for her long ago." Would things have been different if she had?" Maybe, if for one moment she had stopped to think of her sister, things wouldn't be this way. Anna was so hurt; she only ever searched for someone to love her. Elsa, in her state, couldn't give her the love she wanted and needed. You can't just love someone from afar your whole life.

But, maybe, perhaps… she could have said at least a small something to her through that cursed door? To let her know that she cared? Or, would it even have mattered at all? She'd never find out.

"I'm so sorry, Anna."

Tears flooded her cheeks. _My sister is out there somewhere in the cold, possibly dying, and it's because of me, _She sobbed.

* * *

"Hans, you have to kiss me. Now!" Anna clung to him, her only hope, trying so desperately to launch herself up to his lips. Hans held her at a distance wondering where the deep desperation had come from. When everyone else had exited the room, she began to explain.

It became hard for Anna to stand, so he picked her up and sat her down on the chair. "She froze my heart, and only an act of true love can save me."

"A true love's kiss?" Now, with full understanding, he leaned in, only to crush her spirit, much to his satisfaction.

"Oh, Anna. If only there was someone out there who loved you."

She was such a pathetic little thing, so desperate for love, which made her blind to reason. Anna was a perfect toy for his plan. He was so glad that everything worked out in his favor. After Elsa had made a scene and run off from her coronation, he had no idea how things would turn out. It foiled his original plan and he decided to play it out to see where things would end up. In the end, it worked out to be better than he hoped. Now, both sisters would be gone, and Arendelle would be completely in his hands, all the while he looked like a saint to all the kingdom's citizens.

Hans removed all sources of heat in the room to add to Anna's suffering. He watched her crawl about the floor in the most helpless and pitiful way. He smiled wickedly. It was cute how she thought he wouldn't get away with any of it, when clearly, he already had. He left her to die, locking the door behind him.

* * *

Anna huddled up against the door, a weariness beginning to set in her soul, "No… Please…" She fell away from the door and onto the ground, curling up into a ball. Through her pain, she began to think on her sister in her own cold loneliness. Seeing the locked door behind her, no escape to the outside, no way to find help, is this how she felt? To have a talent that was so powerful in which she forced herself to stow away, that couldn't have been an easy choice.

Anna had proclaimed to her sister that for the first time in forever, she finally understood. But, no, she didn't understand. She probably never really would.

"I'm such an oblivious fool, so reckless that I couldn't see." She had been so desperate to be loved, that she only ever thought of herself. Funny how it took a sociopathic guy that she so blindly fell in love with to point it out to her when it should have been so blatantly obvious.

"You weren't the only lonely one, Anna," she silently cursed herself, "She was lonelier than you were. I wish I had saw things clearly, but I guess I'm just not the sort." And that she wasn't. How much grief she must have caused her sister. Anna walked outside Elsa's door every day, desperately pleading, not knowing what was truly going on. Anna should have known something was not right. If she had just once thought of her sister through all of this instead of dwelling on how only lonely and hurt she felt, would things have ended differently?

Life's too short. Anna knew that all too well now. On the cold, hard ground she lay, dying, no one to love or share that love with, lonely as always, and time was slipping away...

**A/N: I know that I probably used the movie a little too much and not enough of the song or my own imagination, but I hope that it was still good nonetheless. If you have any suggestions on what song or part of the movie you would like to be embellished on in a fanfic, you can PM me or leave me a note in the review section. Thanks so much you guys and I hope you have enjoyed. **


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